In today's workplace, it is common for employees to utilize multiple computers and/or related computing devices. Software testers often utilize computers of varying configurations or platforms during testing and executives have a desktop in the office and a laptop for home or travel. A common problem when using multiple computing devices is that a user has to physically switch between the input devices (e.g., keyboard, mouse, touchpad, etc.) of the computing devices, even if the computing devices are sitting next to each other.
A variety of approaches exist that attempt to solve this problem; each approach solves the problem from a slightly different perspective. A keyboard, video, and mouse (KVM) switch is a hardware solution that unilaterally shares a single keyboard, display, and mouse between multiple computers. Simultaneous control of the connected computers is not possible with this solution nor is sharing of just the keyboard and mouse elements.
Software solutions, such as remote desktop systems, require the installation and maintenance of the software application on both computers as well as a network connection. Such solutions often incur additional overhead, aside from update maintenance, when used like performance latency due to network load, limited access to software applications and security issues due to network architecture. A simple solution to this problem is currently lacking in the conventional approaches, both hardware and software, that are currently available to users.